Apple Has Two-Year Lead Over Smartphone Rivals in 3D Sensing Race

Apple has gained a two-year lead over its rivals in the smartphone industry in the area of 3D sensing technology, according to a new report on Tuesday.

Following talks with three major parts suppliers, Reuters estimates that Android phone makers will have to wait until 2019 to duplicate the 3D sensing feature behind Apple's Face ID security, which debuted last year in the iPhone X.

According to parts manufacturers Viavi Solutions Inc, Finisar Corp and Ams AG, bottlenecks on key parts will mean mass adoption of 3D sensing will not happen until next year, disappointing earlier expectations.

That means that China's Huawei, Xiaomi and others could be a total of almost two years behind Apple, which launched Face ID with its iPhone X anniversary phone last September.

Android producers are reportedly struggling to source vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, or VCSELs, a key component of Apple's TrueDepth camera that the company moved to secure supplies of last year. In December, Apple said it planned to invest $390 million in Finisar Corp, which supplies the components for VCSELs.

Apple said the investment would enable Finisar to exponentially increase its R&D spending and high-volume production of VCSELs, which power some of the iPhone's X flagship features, such as Face ID, Animoji and Portrait mode selfies, as well as the proximity-sensing capabilities of AirPods.

According to Reuters' sources, Apple was initially sourcing VCSELs chiefly from California-based Lumentum, and it was bottlenecks in production there last year that also spurred the $390 million deal with Finisar.

Meanwhile, Lumentum, which declined to comment on the report, is ramping up additional manufacturing capacity for VCSELs and edge-emitting lasers for the first half of fiscal 2019, according to the company’s earnings call.

Another producer, Austria-based Ams, also expects to have VCSEL chips widely available next year and says it has won a large deal with one phone maker.

Viavi, the only major supplier of optical filters needed for the 3D sensing modules, believes only one Android handset maker will deliver 3D sensing by the end of the calendar year, but volumes are likely to be very low. The company expects at least two more Android-based phones to follow that trend in 2019.

According to a report in October by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, inquiries by Android smartphone vendors into 3D-sensing technologies tripled after Apple unveiled its TrueDepth camera and Face ID technology, which will likely replace traditional Touch ID fingerprint recognition in future iOS devices.

Apple is reportedly working on a new high-end 2018 iPad that will adopt many of the design elements from the revamped iPhone X, including built-in support for Face ID. The new tablet device, which is likely to be a "Pro" model, will reportedly do away with the Home button.

Top Rated Comments

Face ID isn’t impressive? I never thought there would be a time when Projecting over 30,000 invisible dots onto your face using facial 3D mapping of a depth map of your face would unlock your iPhone. That alone is impressive to me, perhaps not to others.

I love Face ID. I just found out the other day that I can try to unlock with my eyes closed and then it'll only unlock when I open my eyes. I think this is the "require attention" setting or something but still, it worked every single time without issue and it's like magic.

Some seriously crazy tech in Face ID that makes things easier rather than harder. Swipe up and you're in. Anybody tries the same and it won't work.

I disagree. FaceID makes interaction with the iPhone seamless in the same way that early iPhones without security protections were. You pick up or look at your iPhone X (when you get a notification) and it unlocks. And switching from TouchID eliminated the need for a touch button on the face of the iPhone, freeing up screen space, which was and is another problem FaceID solved. The fact that no matter what device you're using, facial recognition and unlock is such a perfect way to interact, because you don't have to move a finger into a certain position, which like all of the Android phones that have a touch sensor on the back middle of the device requires an un-natural finger movement, effectively with only your pointer finger working (further limiting it's usefulness). All you have to do is look at your device, which we're clearly doing as part of our natural use of the device - it's really a brilliant solution to multiple problems.

That sentence would have been a lot less funny if you had written it like this:
I've lost count of the amount of times I pull my phone from my trunks after a swim...

On topic: Does anyone (generally speaking) really care? Face ID apparently works fine. Touch ID works fine. One being more secure or faster than the other is simply forum fodder. It's not like either takes a long time to activate or has a rash of security breaches.

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